I have read that urine is sterile but I thought it was an urban legend, not something that had never been scientifically tested. Why has no biology student ever done the experiments, aren't they as curious as people who study mathematics or physic?

Duh. Next up, water still wets us, fire still burns, and the Gods of the Marketplace still are full of shiat.

/wanna buy a toothbrush for a thousand dollars?//whoa, don't get mad, how about a brownie for a penny?///yes, it tastes like shiat because it is, in fact, shiat... now would you like to buy a toothbrush for a thousand dollars?

talkertopc:I have read that urine is sterile but I thought it was an urban legend, not something that had never been scientifically tested. Why has no biology student ever done the experiments, aren't they as curious as people who study mathematics or physic?

Because it's harder than it looks to test urine while it's still inside a living creature's bladder, and the "urine is sterile" believers are careful to specify that the pee only remains sterile until it leaves the bladder.

/and when it turns out it isn't sterile even in the bladder, the response is, "well, that's because whatever you used to look at it caused contamination."

From Wikipedia: "Urine is sterile until it reaches the urethra, where epithelial cells lining the urethra are colonized by facultatively anaerobic Gram negative rods and cocci. Current research suggests urine is not even sterile in the bladder." That last sentence there was added on 5/18/14, with an interesting footnote.

The One True TheDavid:From Wikipedia: "Urine is sterile until it reaches the urethra, where epithelial cells lining the urethra are colonized by facultatively anaerobic Gram negative rods and cocci. Current research suggests urine is not even sterile in the bladder." That last sentence there was added on 5/18/14, with an interesting footnote.

JRoo: So...

No more watersports?

Not on open wounds or mucous membranes, which was always a sensible guideline.

The One True TheDavid:From Wikipedia: "Urine is sterile until it reaches the urethra, where epithelial cells lining the urethra are colonized by facultatively anaerobic Gram negative rods and cocci. Current research suggests urine is not even sterile in the bladder." That last sentence there was added on 5/18/14, with an interesting footnote.

JRoo: So...

No more watersports?

Not on open wounds or mucous membranes, which was always a sensible guideline.

Isn't the urethra lined with mucous membrane? Same goes for the areas next to the opening of both the male and female genitals.

But yeah, open wounds... ick. This is concentrated waste that was filtered out of the blood. There's no need to put the stuff back in.

DNA tests are still prohibitively expensive for such uses. That's not to say they won't be at some point. We'll eventually go full on Gattaca.

Its doable now for about $300, and requires batching (so more like 20 people for $6k). Were working on it, cost efficiency requires a targeted assay, this isn't a whole genome sequencing process, but selected bits like a forensic fingerprint. Identifying pee is not important enough to drive the technology, but other kinds of medical tests are going to be replaced with this sort of thing by 2016. And you'll notice the non sterility argument is based on bacterial presence in the urethra, no one is concerned with the human debris, it's quite dead and edible.

What's-a the problem? When-a you pee either in the toilet or in the shower it all goes to the sewer. The sewer all goes-a to the ocean, the ocean is the water we all drink, we are always drinking-a the pee!